Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
food (omnivores) and has also been confirmed for at least some insular
were clearly omnivorous hunters and gatherers, in addition to being
insular primates. So maybe their ancestors were larger-bodied
Homo
erectus
individuals (or ancestors of
Homo erectus
) who somehow got to the
island of Flores around a million years ago—no small feat, given the
isolation of the island and the strong ocean currents in that part of the
world.
18
Clearly, the possibility that
Homo floresiensis
was a dwarfed descendant
of
Homo erectus
could not be ruled out on the basis of body size. Never-
theless, some scientists were extremely skeptical because the physical
appearances of the two species were just too different. Unlike Hobbit's,
the proportions of
Homo erectus
's arms and legs looked like those of liv-
ing people rather than those of long-armed apes or australopithecines.
Further, the size of
Homo erectus
's brain was more than double that of
Hobbit's, and the ratio of brain size to body size (called relative brain
size, or RBS) was also much greater. Hobbit's RBS, on the other hand,
was comparable to that of a chimpanzee or an australopithecine like
Taung. This fact led some researchers to claim that it was impossible
for
Homo floresiensis
to have made the stone tools that were unearthed
near its remains.
how smart were hobbits?
In industrialized cultures, intelligence-quotient tests may be used with
varying degrees of success to quantify how relatively “smart” individu-
als are. As we all know, such tests can have life-altering repercussions.
For example, students may or may not be admitted to certain universi-
ties because of their scores. Heavy reliance on IQ or Scholastic Aptitude
Tests, et cetera, for such purposes has been criticized, because, to be
unbiased, they must be designed according to the values and practices
that test takers have been exposed to while growing up. This is the
reason intelligence tests are described as “culture-bound.”
